with Elder Jared Johnson

with Elder Tanner Johnson

with Elder Christensen

with Elder Proctor

with Elder Runnells

with Elder Murvai

Friday, September 25, 2009

Thank heaven for email! We hear from Josh every Monday, he usually emails in the early afternoon from Hungary, which is about 5:00 am here in Arizona. Ken and I email him on Sunday and then sleep with our cell phones in our hands in case he emails our cell phone number. It's a way to say hello if we answer quickly because he can sort of "text" our cell phones that way and if we respond quickly enough we can almost have a conversation. We haven't really gotten a letter or email that says much more than "hello" and "I'm too busy to write" the past few weeks, so there hasn't been much to post.

It's very interesting, but this young man who was so anxious to leave the MTC and get to Hungary misses the MTC. Now he is in Hungary and misses home, but when he was at home waiting to leave, he wanted to be on his mission! If only we could be happy where we are at the time...wouldn't that be nice? What we hope, as his parents, is that he will look back on all of it and be very happy that he made the choices he's made and realize he did a lot of good and enjoyed it all.

For Hungary you don't need a Visa to enter the country but do need to apply for a Visa within 90 days of arrival. When he arrived in Budapest on August 4th, he had dinner with the mission President and his wife and then they worked on their Visa applications. This past week he had to travel back to Budapest to do more with the application. Apparently a train trip to Budapest from Komlό is a big deal-he has to get up at 4:00 am and the train trip takes over 5 hours. After they are done their business there's another 5-hour trip home and they usually arrive sometime near midnight so it takes an entire day. There'e no resting for them, either, the next morning they are up at their usual time of 6:00 am to get started on another day of service. He has wished several times they had a day to just "chill", as Josh would say. He's very excited to come home and hit school hard because now he knows he can do so much more with his time than he previously thought. He knows he can study from dawn to dusk! And he misses exercising, although they do go for a run every morning. Josh hasn't been much of a runner, he prefers basketball and weight training, but really appreciates the chance to get out and get moving. Komlό is a mining town that is full of hills and Josh and his companion walk everywhere. There are also a lot of stairs so their legs are constantly challenged.

He says a big hello to everyone and appreciates your prayers, letters, pictures, drawings, candy, and is so excited that now a bunch of missionaries are starting to head out!

Tuesday, September 1, 2009

Josh sent a quick email and told us they were tracting in an apartment type building this morning. They went up to the top floor and heard a weird sound behind them. They turned around and saw a man swinging a samurai sword at them! The man started yelling at them to go away and not come back. Apparently he thought they were the Jehovah's Witnesses he'd chased off the day before. Josh said he had a hard time not laughing because the guy looked so funny, he was acting out what he was going to do with the sword if they came back. Yikes! Laughing wouldn't be my first reaction to that but at least it didn't scare them. But they also don't plan on returning to the top floor of that building ever again!